West Village - Geography

Geography

The neighborhood is distinguished by streets that are "off the grid" — set at an angle to the other streets in Manhattan — sometimes confusing both tourists and city residents alike. These roads were laid out in an 18th century grid plan, approximately parallel or perpendicular to the Hudson, long before the Commissioners' Plan of 1811 which created the main street grid plan for later parts of the city. Even streets that were given numbers in the 19th century to make them nominally part of the grid can be idiosyncratic, at best. West 4th Street, formerly Asylum Street, crosses West 10th, 11th and 12th Streets, ending at an intersection with West 13th Street. Heading north on Greenwich Street, West 12th Street is separated by three blocks from Little West 12th Street, which in turn is one block south of West 13th Street.

The Meatpacking District at the north end of this neighborhood, also known as the "Gansevoort Historic District" and MEPA, is filled with trendy boutiques and night clubs.

Beginning in the early 1980s, residential development spread in the Far West Village, between the Hudson River and Hudson Street from West Houston to West 14th Streets.